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Giovanni Luca Conforti and Vocal Embellishment:From Formula to Artful ImprovisationMurray C. Bradshaw

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Bradshaw, Murray C. (1995) "Giovanni Luca Conforti and Vocal Embellishment: From Formula to Artful Improvisation," PerformancePractice Review: Vol. 8: No. 1, Article 3. DOI: 10.5642/perfpr.199508.01.03Available at: http://scholarship.claremont.edu/ppr/vol8/iss1/3

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Renaissance Ornamentation

Giovanni Luca Conforti and Vocal Embellishment:from Formula to Artful Improvisation

Murray C. Bradshaw

Giovanni Luca Conforti is renowned for his two publications dealing withvocal embellishment: (1) Breve etfacile maniera d'essercitarsi. . . afarpassaggi (1593), a treatise on embellishment, and (2) Salmi passaggiati(1601-1603), a three volume set of embellished falsobordoni. His fame isfully justified, for Brown has called his treatise "one of the chief sources ofinformation about specifically vocal ornamentation in the late sixteenth cen-tury,"1 and the embellished psalms remain "the first sacred monodies, thefirst [sacred] solo pieces with basso continuo accompaniment to appear inprint."2

1 Howard Mayer Brown, Embellishing Sixteenth-Century Music (London: Oxford

University Press, 1976), 28. Conforti's treatise has been republished in a facsimile edition

with German translation, Johannes Wolf, ed. (Berlin: Martin Breslauer, 1922), and by

Giancarlo Rastirolla, ed. (Rome: Societa Italiana del Plauto Dolce, 1986) and Denis Stevens,

ed. (New York: Pro Am Music, 1989).

f\

* Murray C. Bradshaw, Giovanni Luca Confbrti: "Salmi passaggiati" (1601-1603)(American Institute of Musicology, Miscellanea 5/1: Neuhausen-Stuttgart, 1985), xiii.

6 Murray C. Bradshaw

Conforti was himself famous for his skill in singing embellishments.3 In1628, twenty years after his death, Giustiniani wrote that he was one ofthose who in their singing used "exquisite passaggi with an extraordinaryeffect and with a unique talent for expressing the text."4 Delia Valle, in hisDiscorso of 1640 spoke of Giovanni Luca as "a great singer of ornamentsand embellishments, who ascended as high as the stars (che andava alto allestelle)."5 And Tommaso Aceti in 1732, over a hundred years after die sing-er's death, wrote that Conforti not only had a fine voice, but "was the first todiscover the method of producing a vocal tremolo while holding one'sbreath and using it according to the correct rules of music."6

What is important about Conforti, then, is that he was a first-rate singer,renowned for his embellishments and expressive interpretation of the text,and that he left us both a treatise on how to learn so sing such embellish-ments and a number of compositions illustrating that art. He provided us, inshort, with a method to approach the art of embellishment as practicedshortly before and after 1600, and, by examining his actual musical compo-sitions, with a specific way of realizing that art.

Nonetheless, a consideration of both die treatise and the psalm settings re-veals that a vast gulf exists between the etude-like exercises of the theoreti-cal treatise and the actual embellished music, a difference similar to that be-tween the exercises of Hanon and the piano etudes of Chopin. The Breveconsists of a series of short exercises which Conforti encouraged beginnersto practice and memorize so that "easily, in a short time, and gradually, theywill become familiar, agile, and secure widi them, possessed with the rules

He entered the Sis tine Choir as a falsetto-contralto in 1580, was dismissed on the ex-press orders of Pope Sixtus V in 1585, worked briefly for the Duke of Sessa, sang at theFrench national church in Rome (1587-88), and in 1591 once again gained admission to theSistine Choir, where he remained until his death in 1608. For further details concerning hislife see Bradshaw, Conforti, xv-xxviii and passim.

Vincenzo Giustiniani, Discorso sopra la musica de'suoi tempi (Lucca, 1628), repr. in

Angelo Solerti, Le oiigini del melodramma (Turin, 1903; repr. Hildesheim: Georg 01ms,

1969), 110.

Quoted in Solerti, Le origini, 162.

Quoted in Baini, Memorie storico-critiche delta vita e detle opere di Giovanni Pier-

luigi da Palestrina (Rome, 1828; repr. Hildesheim: Georg 01ms, 1966), 1/85, no. 127. Con-forti does indi-cate trilii (or tremolos) in his music, but tells us little about them, except that"where a Y is written above or below the note line, you should sing a trill, if you know how todo it"; see Bradshaw, Conforti, xlviii.

G. L. Conforti and Vocal Embellishment

for each interval" and be able to apply them to any composition.7 In thethree volumes of Salmi, though, we have numerous expressive composi-tions, far removed from the pedestrian exercises of the Breve. The questionfor the performer is how to find a bridge between, on the one hand, meretechnique and, on the other, skilled artistry, between pedagogical exercisesand the realm of true music. That such a link exists is very clearly illustrat-ed by the Salmi passaggiati of Conforti.

I. The Breve et facile maniera d'essercitarsi

In the introductory material to the Salmi of 1601, Conforti referred backspecifically to the Breve et facile maniera d'essercitarsi of 1593. "If youwish to embellish other works [than these psalms] you can do it by your-self," he wrote, "since in another one of my published books you can seenhow to embellish all the notes you wish, from one note to the next."8 At thevery end of the treatise Conforti placed a brief dichiaratione or statement inwhich he noted that "beautiful and correct singing is only found in largecities and in princely courts," and, then, only by "virtuosi" who had learnedtheir manner of singing "not by being born with it" (that is, by innate talent),but "through practice over a long period of time, and without any method."9

He added that he had "observed that all who sing and play have little hopeof acquiring this skill except wim much difficulty and over a long period oftime."10 One of his goals, then, was efficiency and practicality, "so thatthose who sing might, in less than two months, be able to acquire a good andeasy technique."11 To do this, Conforti tried "to avoid making a large

' " . . . a poco a poco diventeranno familiari, agili, sicuri, & possessor! con regola di

tutti li soggetto fatti." Breve, 4R.

° See Plate 1 for the title page to the Breve, with its marred and unclear date; Con-forti's comment in his Salmi proves that the publication date for the Breve was 1593.

" "Essendomi accorto, che solo nelle Citta grandi, & nelle corti de Prencipi, si usa ilraodo di cantar con vaghezza, e disposib'one, & che quelli che in cid hanno riportado lode,sono stati, per lo pii), virtuosi, non in esse nati, ma foreseen ivi trasportati, li quali hanno ac-quistata per prattica, solo per sentire in progresso di molto tempo, & senza regola." Breve, 1R.

' " " . . . & havend'io osservato, che tutti quelli che cantano, & sonano, non hanno spe-ranza d'acquistarla, se non con molta difficolta, & lungo tempo..."; Breve, 1R.

1 1 ^ ' . . .si potesse esseguire con una maniera breve, con laquale potranno tutti quelli,che cantano, in nteno di duoi mesi, far acquisto di bona, & leggiadra dispositione"; Breve, IV.


book," and "included only those [embellishments] which, in my opinion, arethe most gracious and pleasant, and these I have tried to arrange with asmuch facility and brevity as possible."12 His slim volume remains a mostpractical how-to-do-it book—32 pages long (including title page and fron-tispiece), in small quarto format, and with a dichiaratione of four folios atthe end.13

He began the exercises with embellishments of intervals (ascending and de-scending seconds, thirds, fourths, fifths, octaves, and unisons), a procedurethat Francesco Tosi was to recommend almost 150 years later: teachers,wrote Tosi, should persuade students "to have recourse to the fundamentalrules, which will teach [them] to proceed on the bass from one interval toanother with sure steps, and without danger of erring," exactly the methodConforti used in 1593.14 **The usual intervals for embellishment," hecontinued, "are no more than nine, two by step (mi fa and fa mi), two bythirds, two by fourths, two by fifths, and the unison."15 He followed theseelementary exercises with a group of slightly more elaborate embellishments(pages 20-25), several illustrations of "groppi" (trills beginning on the mainnote and alternating with the note below) and "trilli" (vibratos or tremoloswritten as series of repeated notes), embellished cadences (26-32), and, fi-nally, by a few more elaborate exercises (3O-32).16

An outline of Conforti's "brief book follows with the pages of the facsimileedition given in parentheses:

'^ " . . . & per fuggir la grandezza del volume, ho preso solamente quelli che a miogiuditio sono piu gratiosi, e dilettevoli, & quest ho c&rcato di ridurli a piu facilita, & brevitache sia possibile..."; Breve, TV.

1 3 By placing the dichiaratione last and the musical exercises first, Conforti clearlysignaled that the exercises are more important than the accompanying notes.

' * Pier Francesco Tosi's Observations on the Florid Song, tr. Mr. GaUiard (1742);mod. ed. (London: Stainer & Bell, 1987), p. 79 (IX, 73); Tosi's Opinioni de' contort antichi e

mode mi was originally published in 1723.

1 5 " . . . dico che li movimenti principali, & ordinary, che fanno il soggetto perpassaggiare, non sono piu di nove, duoi gradati, cioe mi fa, & fa mi, duoi per terza, duoi perquarts, duoi per quinta, & vna ferma..."; Breve, 3V.

lf> In his Salmi Conforti wrote that "groppi" (our modern trills) can be held twice theirvalue since they occur only at cadences.

G. L. Conforti and Vocal Embellishment 9

a step up (3)a step down (5)a third up (7)a third down (8)a fourth up (10)a fourth down (11)a fifth up (13)a fifth down (14)unison (16)octave (18)more elaborate embellishments (20)list of ornaments (groppi, trilli) (25)embellished cadences (26-32)

For his exercises Conforti used seven different clefs (so that the same musiccould fit any vocal range), and now and then offered several different ver-sions of a single diminution (as in the first diminution in Ex. 1, where a littlecross in the score indicates the alternative reading).17 Words, like "Salve,"are given as an alternative to solfeggio syllables, in order that singers could"practice changing the syllables on the notes in order to get used to con-trolling the vowels."18 Triple meter is used only now and then (indicated bya 3; see Ex. 1), but when a "3" is found "under two cromes or at cadences"this is nothing else but a "trill, doubling the number [of notes], and it makesthe music more attractive . . "l9 Most embellishments cover one measureand only gradually, toward the end, do they become more complex. "In thebeginning," Conforti warned, "embellish only with cromes [eighthnotes]."20 Ex. 1 shows all of the different ways Conforti embellished anascending second.

1 7 "The placing of [one] note over another shows the different ways you can sing theembellishment" (la collocatione dell'vna sopra l'altra, mostra in quanti modi si pud variarc ilpassaggio); Breve, 2R. The notes in the first embellishment in Ex. 1 would be b-e-d-b-c, b-c-d-b-c, b-c-a-b-c, and b-g-a-b-c.

1 8 " . . . si possono essercitare in cambio di dire le note, per assuefarc le vocali a far ladispositione"; Breve, 2R.

"L'altro tre, che si vede sotto duoi crome, overo nel fine delle cadenze, altro nonvoglio dire che trillo, che rendendo al doppio il numero, imbellisce il canto, & copre molddifetti"; Breve, 2R. Examples occur on p. 25 of the treatise.

2 0 " . . . per vn principio passaggiare solo di crome..."; Breve, 3V.


Ex. 1. Conforti, Breve (1593), embellishmentsof an ascending second (p. 3)

J , j j J» IJ, fa3

Sal - ve

i ^g

< & » • * ^ •*


Conforti skips over the whole question of what dissonances or consonancesare formed by the embellishments and the harmonies of the bass line. Thestudents, he wrote, who have difficulties with such embellishments, that is,in not knowing which are good or what particular consonants to use, should"exercise themselves in singing, playing, or writing out embellishedworks."21 In other words, to discover which embellishments sound good ordo not sound good is a matter of trial-and-effort.

In nine days, however, the student should be able '*to learn and memorize"[these embellishments], and, in twenty or more of practice, "should be ableto sing and improvise in any book [of music]."22 Finally, "in less than twomonths, you [could] . . . acquire a good and easy technique."23 Accordingto Conforti, then, it should take about two or three months to learn to embel-lish music competently.

To embellish, he wrote, "it will be enough to consider the quality of the noteand the proper place to be embellished, and then, second, the value [of thenote]."24 Then you "go to a similar spot in my little book" (the Breve),"borrow the embellishment you need, one that sounds good, as I have said,or choose some others that, perhaps, might be even more beautiful."25 Also,"you can vary them, making them longer or shorter, according to your fluen-cy and ability."26 Above all, emphasized Conforti, these embellishmentsmust sound good; they must "delight the ears of those friends of music who

2 1 "Et havendo forsi alcuno difficulty che non si pussa conoscere quali passaggi siano

boni, bora per vna consonanza, & hora per 1'altra, & che per questo si resti di essercitarsi a

cantare, sonare, o scrivere opere passaggiate"; Breve, 3R.

2 2 " . . . li quali in nove giomi si possono imparare, & tenerli in memoria, & in vend o

poco pit! essercitandoli si possono fare, cantando sicuramente in ogni libra all'improviso";

Breve, 3V.

" " . . . in meno di duoi mesi, far acquisto di bona, & leggiadra dispositione"; Breve,

IV.

2 4 "Et per voler passaggiare qua! si voglia opera, bastera solo considerate la qualita

deUe note, & il sito atto ad essere passaggiato, & poi secondo il loro valore . . . "; Breve, 3V.

2 5 " . . . andate alle simili del libretto, & di esse recavatane li passaggi segnati, che

consoneranno, come b5 detto, overo pigliarete dell'altri che faranno forsi piix vaghi . . .";

Breve, 3V-4R.

2 6 " . . . & variare, accrescere, e [d]iminuire il passaggio, secondo la facilita della

dispositione"; Breve, 4R.


are masterful in distinguishing the good from the bad."27 This emphasis onthe practical, on what sounds good, is typical of the age.28

For teachers, Conforti advised that they have their students sing these exer-cises along with them, starting with the unembellished interval (in Ex. 1, anascending second), until the students have memorized each of the embellish-ed versions.29 To become more proficient, the student "can, also, take fouror more notes at a time . . . and place them one after the other," using differ-ent-valued notes for the embellishments, and then practice singing themfrom memory, quickly gaining fluency."30

In his last paragraph Conforti wrote that these exercises are also useful "forthose who wish to practice on a string or wind instrument" (con la viola, 6altri strumenti da fiato). In fact, the title page of the Breve has a surround-ing border of instruments, a recorder placed horizontally along the top, aviol and a cornett on the left border, a lute and a shawm on the right, and atransverse flute along the bottom (see Plate 1). The opposite side of the titlepage illustrates the power of music, one of the favorite themes of that age—Apollo, playing a violin (viola da braccio), charms the wild beasts of theforest (see Plate 2). For instrumentalists, Conforti repeated his advice to"play [the exercises] frequently or write them out in the manner alreadygiven."31 In order to know the character of embellishment, however, besure you play your instrumental embellishments "with a light hand andsweet bowing, just as they are written, and their variety will stay in your

2 7 " . . . servendosi pert del diletto dell'orecchie, le quali amiche del concento, sono

maestre a far conoscere il bono dal falso . . ."; Breve, 4R.

2 " For another example from the same decade, see Giroiamo Diruta's // Transitvano, I

(Venice, 1593), which was "essentially a practical treatise, a fact which Diruta often stresses";

English trans, by Murray C. Bradshaw and Edward J. Sohnlen (Hemyville Pa.: Institute of

Mediaeval Music, 1984), 12.

2 9 "Et se quclli ch'insegnano, essercitaranno i loro scolari a far canter seco li primi

soggetti a battuta, overamente dargliene cantanno vna per volta alia mente . . ." ; Breve, 4R.

3 0 "Possono ancora quelli che si dilettano di passaggiare, pigliare quattro, 6 pi& note

alia vol ta . . . & ponerle l'vna appresso all'altra, & poi di esse pigliarne il passaggto di crome,

semicrome, 6 puntate, vnendoli; & essercitandosi cantandoli alia mente, diventeranno con

prestezza agili di dispositione"; Breve, 4R/

3 1 "Servono anco per quelli che vogliono essercitarsi con la viola, o altri strumenti da

fiato, con sonarli spesso, 6 scriverli con la maniera gia detta..."; Breve, 4V.


mind."32 Lightness and sweetness are the desired qualities of all of thismusic, whether it be vocal or instrumental. "If you practice well, you willthen be able to demonstrate [your ability] by playing and improvising themwith others."33

Conforti has tried to make the leap from technical proficiency to art musicas easy as possible: memorize these short embellishments, apply them asneeded in a composition (sometimes stringing four or more out in a row),and keep practicing. Yet, he has skimmed over the immense leap to actualimprovisation. Perhaps his most important piece of advice is that, as thestudent gains in agility, "he will, also, be able to acquire grace and be ablemore easily to imitate those who have sung with confidence for manyyears."34 It is this "imitation of others," along with Giustiniani's commenton Conforti's "unique talent for expressing the text," that takes us from themechanical exercises of the Breve into the realms of actual music.

n . The Salmi passaggiati (1601-1603)

The bridge that connects Conforti's Breve et facile maniera and the Salmipassaggiati is for the student not one of empty virtuosity, the piling up ofshort cliches one after the other, as might be implied by Conforti's treatise,but rather using these short cliches, seldom more that a measure long, in asensitive and spontaneous way to express the text. This was, perhaps, thewhole ration d'itre of early 17th-century music. Giustiniani, as mentioned,noted the close connection between virtuoso embellishment and expres-sion,35 as do other writers of that time. Caccini in his he nuove musiche(1602) wrote that in his madrigals and airs he had "always sought to imitatethe ideas behind the words," and had "observed the same rule in making

3 2 " . . . gjovera a far la mano leggiadra, l'aicata dolce, conoscere il genere del pas-

saggio, come si scrivono, & restera nella memoria la diversity di essi"; Breve, 4V.

3 3 "& havendo sopra ci& fatta bona prattica, si possono poi dimostrare, sonandoli in

compagnia aH'improviso"; Breve, 4V.

3 4 "Et facendosi il scolaie agile di voce, potra anco acquistare da se la gratia; & sen*

tendo altri, sara assai pid facile ad imitate, che quello che di mold anni ha cantata sicuro,

come sta nel libra"; Breve, 4R.

3 5 Vide supra, p. 6 and fn. 4.


Plate 1. Title Page of ConfortPs Breve et facilemaniera d'essercitarsi . . . a far passaggi (1593)


Plate 2. Page from Conforti's Breve et facilemaniera d'essercitarsi... afarpassaggi (1593)


passaggi," although some embellishments, "for a bit of decoration," couldbe added here and there.36

Furthermore, this early 17th-century approach offered a new kind of text ex-pression, one that very clearly moved away from the surface expression ofthe madrigalists toward a deeper and even allegorical expression of the un-derlying meaning. Conforti now and then used obvious madrigalisms, as forthe word "sagittae" in verse 5 of example 2, where the swift melodic linesand echo effects "paint" the flight and disappearance of the "arrows," al-though he usually expressed the text by far more subtle means. It was thisthat Galilei was after when he so roundly condemned composers who wouldset words like "to disappear," "to swoon," "to die," by making "the partsbreak off so abruptly, that instead of inducing the passion corresponding toany of these, they have aroused laughter and at other times contempt in thelisteners, who felt that they were being ridiculed."37 Galilei espoused simplemusical textures, a clear declamation of the text, and an expression of theinner rather than outer meaning of the text, of sensus rather than ratio. Con-forti applied this new approach to his own embellishments.

The first volume of the Salmi (1601) consisted of nine embellished falso-bordoni for soprano, the second (1602) of nine for tenor, and the third(1603) of the same for bass voice. It is one of the largest surviving sourcesfor embellished music, containing about 132 psalm verses. The falso-bordone itself was an ideal genre for embellishment—Kuhn thought the veryheights of embellishment had been reached in this music38—since it wasessentially a harmonized psalm tone with many repeated chords and twomain cadences, a mediant for the first half of the verse, and a final one forthe last half. The falsobordone was extremely popular in those days, somuch so that Pietro Cerone wrote in 1613 that "in these kingdoms of Spainthe singing of psalms in figured music is not customary except in falso-

3°GiulJo Caccini, he nuove musicbe (Florence [1602]); mod. ed. H. Wiley Hitchcock,

ed. (Madison: A-R Editions, 1970), 46.

3'Vincenzo Galilei, Dialogo (1581); trans, and ed. by Oliver Stnink in Source Read-

ings in Music History (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1950), 316.soJ O Max Kuhn, Die Verzierungs-Kunst in der Gesangs-Musik des 16.-17. Jahrkunderts,

1535-1650 (Leipzig, 1902; repr. Wiesbaden; M. Sandig, 1969), 35. On the overall history of

the genre of the falsobordone see Murray C. Bradshaw, The Falsobordone, a Study in Renais-

sance and Baroque Music (Neuhausen-Stuttgart: American Institute of Musicology, 1978).


bordone."39 In 1615 Francesco Severi, another singer in the Sistine Chapel,brought out some Salmi passaggiati remarkably similar to Conforti's,40 andthe conservative Lodovico Viadana, who published a huge amount of falso-bordoni during his lifetime, included embellished falsobordoni in his famousCento concerti ecclesiastici of 1602 almost as a matter of course.41

Each piece of Conforti's Salmi is based on a psalm tone cantus firmus,which was, however, not written down. It is an "ideal" melody, the basis forthe entire composition, but one that can be realized if necessary in the conti-nuo accompaniment. Furthermore, Conforti did not always embellish theactual ideal melody, but rather, like a jazz player of today, the harmoniesderived from that melody, as can be seen from the opening verses of thepsalm Nisi Dominus, as illustrated in the following example.42

Ex. 2. Conforti, Salmi (1601), "Nisi Dominus"(tone 5, verses 1,3,5)

Vs. 1

§Psalm Tone 5Recitation Mediant Cadence

Soprano ©

1. Ni - si Do-mi-nus(Organ) Bass

o ' ~ p g

ae-di-fi-ca'-ve-rit do mum,

3 9 Pietro Cerone, El melopeo y maestro, 1613 (facs. ed., Bologna: Forni, 1969), n,689.

** Modern edition by Murray C. Bradshaw in Recent Researches in the Music of theBaroque Era, 38 (Madison: A-R Editions, 1981).

4 ' On Viadana's extensive use of falsobordoni, see Murray C. Bradshaw, "LodovicoViadana as a Composer of Falsobordoni," Studi musicali 19 (1990), 91-131. The solo piecesin the Cento concerti have been edited by Claudio Gallico, Monumenti musicali mantovani 1(Mantua: Istituto Carlo d'Arco per la storia di Mantova, 1964).

4 2 This is exactly what happened in the evolution of the vocal falsobordone into thekeyboard toccata; see Murray C. Bradshaw, The Origin of the Toccata ([Rome]; AmericanInstitute of Musicology, 1972); "The Toccatas of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck," Tijdschri.fi vande Vereni-ging voor Nederlandse Muziek Geschiedenis 25 (1975), 38-60; "Andrea Gabrieliand the Early History of the Toccata," Andrea Gabrieli e il suo tempo (Studi di musica veneta,11; Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1987), 319-346.


Recitation Final Cadence

•3

J J1J.J1J n Jn J Ju.jj;j1j;.3iJjjjjjjjj

in va - num la-bo-ra - ve - runt qui x - di fi-cant

o' ro-

Vs. 3Recitation

I.Ie - am.

-o—

3. Va - num est vo bis an-te lu-cem

P« l-e-

iMediant Cadence

sur ge

Recitation

i

re: Sur-gi-te post-quam se-de-ri - tis, qui man-du-

Final Cadence

ca tis pa - nem do-lo - ris.

' ~ i*O-o 10


Vs. 5Recitation

IMediant Cadence

Echo

- n u ma nu po - ten

JIT"

Recitation Mediant Cadence

_f\ Egasa feg^-, F^^^ F^T^i C^ f̂f ^^^H r j f f FTfcli MMM IM

fc u JJ IJJ JJ I JJJJ JJJ i n u UJ i nJ j j j jn i i—i—1-44

(k" ^r° 1

•ji • y • - • -

cus -

^ =• " —

so •

II

• • - . _

mm.

.j—^o '

II

o


All of the embellishments in "Nisi Dominus" are taken from the Breve.Conforti did exactly what he had advised his students to do—find out whatnotes (intervals) need to be embellished and then embellish them with ap-propriate and attractive ones drawn from the Breve. In looking at a fewmeasures from one of the more complex verses of Ex. 2 (verse 5), it is ob-vious that in m. 47 (and its "echo" in m. 48) Conforti embellished the notes fto f (a unison) and f up to c (a fifth up), and that in m. 50 (and its "echo" inm. 51) the notes c-a-f-f-c (two thirds down, a unison, and a fifth up), allnotes based on the triad built on the bass note f, which in its turn was thebass for the ideal chant melody (the recitation note c). Each of these embel-lishments is made up of a stringing together of smaller embellishmentsfound in Conforti's Breve. In Ex. 3 the vocal embellishments from verse 5(Ex. 2) are placed on the top line, the organ bass on the second line, and theshort exercises from the Breve on the third. (The numbers above the Brevepart give the pages on which these short embellishments are found; theyhave been transposed, their rhythms simplified, and asterisks added to in-dicate the basic pitches being embellished.)

Ex. 3. Comparison of Salmi (1601) and Breve (1593) Embellishments

Salmi


The mediant cadence of this same verse (5) shows a three-measure embel-lishment of the b-flat triad (54-56) followed by the embellishment of afourth down (57-58), and of a unison (58) and an ascending third (58-59).For the long b-flat triad (54-56) Conforti embellished the notes d to b-flat(third down), b-flat to b-flat (unison), b-flat to d (third up), d to c (stepdown), and c to d (step up). All embellishments are taken from the Breve.

Ex. 4. Comparison of Salmi and Breve Embellishments

Salmi

Breve:


Although it is easy to track down these small figures, it is another thing toexplain to the student why one setting is so much better than the other, andwhy one embellishment works so much more easily than another. The basisfor coming to understand this difference, though, is the desire of Confortiand other composers of the time to express the text not by obvious madrigal-isms but in more subtle and meaningful ways. The succession of embellish-ments in the Salmi is far more than a pastiche of memorized motives.

In the two "recitations" of verse 1 (1-5 and 11-14), in Ex. 2, Conforti settleson one note (a), embellishing it hardly at all, but supplying each recitationwith a flexible declamatory rhythm and melody. Such recitations must besung freely. As Conforti described it, "from the beginning of the verse up tothe line with two dots, even if written in measured time, you can sing with-out it [measured time], but from these two dots up to the first dot of thewords of the verse . . . you must always sing with a beat."43 The two dotsoccur at 6 and 14, just where the psalm tone cadences are beginning. Reci-tations, in short, are to be sung in a free, declamatory fashion, but cadencesstrictly in time, although Conforti stated that you should "sing embellish-ments of four or five beats as quickly as possible, so that you do not have totake a breath."44

The recitations move along in an easy flow with different agogic accents("Nfsi D6minus aedifica'verit... in vdnum laboraveYunt q u i . . .") with restsor long notes marking off and emphasizing the different phrases and words.With the two main cadential words, however, Conforti makes a move, dis-creet as it is, towards text expression. "Domum" moves gently up the scale(with a modest crescendo more than likely) and then down, by way of a"soft" e-flat, to its Final note c, with the steady rhythms and upward motionsymbolizing the solid "house" which God alone can build. But the notatede-flat adds an element of sorrow, and the rhythm of the second recitation(11-13) is a bit more agitated—"in vain do they labor." Its cadence withagitated dotted rhythms and a repetitive kind of melody (16 mirrors 15, asdoes 17 with its outlining of a fourth) reflect the anxiety of those "who buildit." The slow, final measures bring this brief but expressive verset to anend.

•* Bradshaw, Conforti, xci.

4 4 Ibid.


Ex. 5. Conforti, Salmi (1602), "Nisi Dominus," verse 3

Tenor

r Ir r Ir r r r r p p r r f r f r l Ivs. 3 Va

(Organ) Bassnum est vo - bis an - te lu-cetn sur

b

r f iJ r r y ^ n * r r n r rsiir-gi-te post-quam se-de - ri-tis, quiman-du - ca - lis pa

nem pa-nemdo - lo - ris.

II I I'


In verse 3 (see Ex. 5)—the performance is alternatim—Conforti embellish-es the two recitations (21-25 and 33-38) far more so than in verse 1. Thelong note on "vanum" and the drawn-out flourish on "vdbis" (set off, too, bymoving up to c but down again to a seem to show the "vanity" of those who"rise before the dawn." With its winding melody and rhythmic changes(from steady eighth notes through a dotted figure, half and quarter notes, toswiftly flowing sixteenths), the cadence (26-32) reflects the tedious effort ofrising "ante lucem." Even the unexpected leap of a fifth at 29 allegoricallymirrors the laborious effort involved. Conforti is speaking in an allegoricalmusical language very different from the word painting of the madrigalists.

The second recitation (33-38), even though it seems with its modest embel-lishments most unlike a recitation, rises up to c three times only to fall backdown each time—reflecting the weariness of those who thought they mightrest but must now "arise, after you are seated," to eat "the bread of sorrow"(panem doloris). The final cadence (38-44), with the words **panemdoloris," moves gently up to d and falls slowly down to the final d, "sorrow"being expressed, too, by the long-held e (41-42) with its low pitch and itsoutlining of a diminished fifth with the emphasized b-flat of the previousmeasure.

Conforti approached the fifth verse (whose embellishing motives were ana-lyzed in Exx. 3 and 4) in a more madrigal-like way, with both "sagittae"(arrows) and "manu" (in the hand) being more floridly set than any otherwords so far—with the rising melody of "sagittae" picturing the rising of thearrow at the beginning of its flight, and the down-up motion of "manu" itswinging through the air—and with echo effects depicting the disappearingshots.45 Such elaborate embellishments are usually reserved for cadences,but Conforti clearly took advantage of the text to do so in this opening re-citation. The unchanging harmonies, however, as well as the ideal melodymark these measures (45-52) as recitation. The embellishments continuewith the cadence (53-60), starting on a strong and lengthy b-flat major har-mony (54-57) with the passaggi emphatically marking out the basic notes ofthat chord (54-55) and then doing it once more (55-56), before endingforthrightly in f major with slow moving harmonies (57-58) followed by afinal flourish (58)—all expressing the sense of the "powerful man" (poten-tis). Conforti's emphasis of the b-flat harmony was deliberate—he did it in

* 5 Echo pieces were beginning to be used around this time, one being written, for

instance, by Jacopo Peri for the famous 1589 intermedi celebrating the marriage of the Grand

Duke of Tuscany and Christine of Lorraine in Florence; the most well-known echo piece of the

day was probably Monteverdi's "Possente spirto," in Orfeo, Act in—see Tim Carter, Music in

Late Renaissance and Early Baroque Italy (Portland: Amadeus Press, 1992), 154.


verse 3 for "surgere" (26-28), but less so in verse 1 with its quiet setting of"domum" (6-7).

The second recitation opens with a peremptory setting of "ita filii" (so thechildren), the irrevocable fate of the children being allegorically expressedby slower rhythms and an ascending-descending melody (61-62). The fol-lowing cadence starts with an unexpected and sustained d, which then slow-ly over three measures (64-67) and almost violently falls from the high ddown to e, rising decisively at the end to an a, all mirroring the text "ofthose who are shaken" (excussorum).

Each individual line and phrase of these verses is expressed in its own way,depending on just what aspect of them Conforti wished to emphasize. Thefertility of his imagination can be seen in a parallel setting of verse 3 fromthe tenor volume (1602), where the words "surgere" and "panem doloris"receive a slightly different interpretation.

The recitation rises slightly from a to c, "vanum est vobis ante lucem" (vainis it for you before the dawn) and flows directly into the cadential setting(29-36) for "surgere" (to rise). Here Conforti chose not to set "surgere" inan obviously vigorous and madrigalesque way, but rather to show the sheerphysical effort and vanity that such a "rising" might involve. Its tediousnessis revealed by the steady movement from b-flat up to a sustained f (29-30),followed by a gradual and wearying sequential descent with eighth notesover three measures (31-33) and with a doleful e-flat written in. After thatlengthy descent the music "rises" again, but with some effort, to an empha-sized c (33-36). It may seem paradoxical that Conforti set "surgere" notwith vigorous, rising melodies, but with a laboring and wearisome kind ofmusic, yet he is very typical of other composers of that time—Caccini, Peri,Cavalieri, Monteverdi, Grandi—whose new approach towards the textstrove to express not the surface meaning but the underlying feeling andcontent of the words, of their sensus rather than ratio.

The recitative for the last half of verse 3 starts with a lyrical setting of "ariseafter you sit" (surgite postquam sederitis). After a pause, a steady recitativethen begins on "y°u w°o eat" (qui manducatis) followed by an embellishedcadence on "the bread of sorrow" (panem doloris). In the cadence the strik-ing repetition (45-48) of the skeletal descending melody of 42-44 with itsfast, jerky rhythms and trill (vibrato)—and after a held note and a rest (44-45), and with a dramatic repetition of the word "panem" (bread)—all ex-press allegorically the sensus (emotion) of "panem doloris," as does thenotated b-flat.


Conclusion

Despite Conforti's effort at practicality and his desire to help students learnto embellish within three months, artful embellishment must have remaineddifficult to achieve. Many years after Conforti, Couperin wrote in his L'Artde toucher le clavecin that just "as there is a great distance between gram-mar and declamation, there is also an infinite one between the printed pageand a good performance."46 The distance is equally infinite between theelementary exercises of Conforti's treatise and the sensitive and expressiveimprovisations of his Salmi. The actual music of that day moved far beyondmere exercises in virtuoso display, because the great desire to express theinner meaning of the text had become of paramount importance to singersand composers.

Galilei was the first to articulate the desire to create a music that would imi-tate not "the sound of one word only," but rather "the complete thought andmeaning of the words and of the whole text."47 Conforti falls securely inthis camp, and, indeed, his falsobordoni present us with two ways of ap-proaching the text-music dialectic of the early 17th century. His musical re-citations, on the one hand, are usually presented with a recitative-like de-clamation, and his cadences, on the other, with sweeping and expressivepassaggi. The result is a contrast of styles in which the text is first pre-sented in a more or less straightforward recitative fashion followed by afreer, more emotional ending, explicatio followed by sensus. The brilliantand melismatic cadences, indeed, are "a way of pouring forth spiritual emo-tions in a manner that reached back at least to Augustine (d. 430), whoviewed music above all as the language of the heart."48 Conforti in his re-citations was mostly concerned with a "rhetorical, simple, clear, and de-clamatory explicationes textus, tied not so much to ordinary speech as toheightened declamation," and in his cadences with a "melismatic, florid, andemotionally charged expressiones textus, during which the singer often

4" "Comme il y a une grande distance de la Grammaire, a la Declamation; il y en a

aussi une infinie entre la Tablature, et la facon de bien-jouer;" Francois Couperin, L"An de

toucher le clavecin (Paris, 1717; facs. ed. Geneva: Editions Minkoff, 1986), preface.

4 ' Vincenzo Galilei, II primo libro della prattica del contmpunto, trans, in Carter, Late

Renaissance, 186, from Claude Palisca, The Beginnings of Baroque Music (Ph.D. diss.,

Harvard University, 1953).

4 ° Murray C. Bradshaw, 'Text and Tonality in Early Sacred Monody," to be published

in Musica Disciplina.


moved beyond mere words—'ratio' [in the recitations] followed andenlivened by 'sensus' [in the cadences]."49

It is also easy to overlook the very obvious fact that Conforti was not writingin the traditional Renaissance manner associated with the prima prattica.His music "contrasts markedly with the supposed gravity of the stile anticocanonized by Palestrina and his contemporaries."50 There is no attempt atpolyphony. Conforti conceived this music from the first as solo music witha bass line over which the accompanist was to fill in the harmonies. It is puttogether as a series of small, discreet phrases, much like the recitatives andsongs of Peri and Caccini. Conforti came down very much on the side ofthe seconda prattica, at least in his avoidance of polyphony, use of declama-tory, speech-based melody, and emphasis on text expression. The Artusi-Monteverdi conflict was, as Carter noted, essentially a "sense-versus-reasondebate,"51 that is, about whether or not the effect that a piece of music pro-duces takes precedence over following the rules. Conforti was allied firmlyon the side of sensus, the point of view "that considers harmony not com-manding, but commanded, and makes the words the mistress of the har-mony."52

The true style and spirit of embellishment around 1600, then, is found onlypartly in the Breve et facile maniera and in other manuals of embellishment.It is in the Salmi of 1601-1603, and in works like it, that the contemporarymusici et cantores could begin to see and understand not just the techniquebut the very art of embellishment. For these texts, Conforti created melo-dies of great elegance and rhythms imbued with a freshness and spontaneity"far beyond the dry examples of his pedagogical treatise. The entire art ofembellishment, as practiced around 1600, was an art of melody and rhythm,of unity and variety, of artistry and taste,"53 and, in the hands of the bestcomposers and singers, of a supreme desire to express not only the outersense of the text {ratio) but its inner meaning and emotion as well (sensus).

4 9 Bradshaw, 'Text and Tonality."

5 0 Carter, Late Renaissance, 227.

5 1 Ibid. 146. On this debate, see especially Claude Palisca, "The Artusi-Monteverdi

Controversy," The New Monteverdi Companion (London: Faber and Faber, 1985), 127-58.

" Foreword to the fifth book of madrigals (1605) by Giulio Monteverdi writing on

behalf of his brother Claudio; trans, in Stmnk, Source Readings, 409.

" Bradshaw, Conforti, xlv.

Documents

Giovanni Luca Conforti and Vocal Embellishment: From